Friends, I know I’ve been quiet and sporadic for the last year or more. Honestly, I was having a lot of problems on this side of the keyboard, and I felt like a fraud trying to write about poly and spirituality and living your fullest life when my own was failing in all of those aspects. I kept telling myself I’d be back once I had all my ducks in a row, but eventually I saw the ducks for what they were, not mine to control or organize. If the ducks are alive and well they’ll never be in a row long enough to do anything. So, I’m back if you’ll have me.

With that…the recap.

The healing from Good Girl was amazing, and still rippling its way to the surface every day. I’ve seen it manifest in the way I handle toxic relationships, breakups, new experiences, and how I make change in my life. Late last year I started writing a second show, and it dawned on me how much more freeing, but also scary it is, to be doing it on my own this time. My Power of One family got me through some rough turbulence, and I’ll always cherish the experience I had with them. Now, however, it’s time to be independent and trust that doing things my way is just as powerful. You see where I’m going with this? It’s been time for a while to tell my Imposter Syndrome to shove it for a while now.

I’ve spent a better part of the last year in the hospital or recovering from various ailments, and it’s really had me feeling mortality, but I also started three beautiful relationships and met a whole tribe of people who have reminded me what it is to live, and how much easier it is to heal with people by your side. In May I had an experience at a burn where I actually lost consciousness, and it felt like a part of me was left there in the mud. A part of me that had been clinging for so long I didn’t even realize it was still dragging me down. I was a new me, and I was unstoppable. Ducks! Row! For about 5 minutes.

In November I had an experience that not only tested the healing I’d been doing for the better part of three years, but also the integrity and clarity I promised myself years ago I would always carry with me. What’s worse was how it tore apart my tribe and almost shattered more than one of my relationships. Worse than the one day of physical trauma was the lasting affects it’s had on my life, and I’m still not back 100%. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t listen to music. I lost my outlets, but I was able to doodle, and from it came a whole new form of healing expression and communication. I couldn’t form verbal words to work through the trauma with my partners, so I sketched them. And from this, growth. From this, love. No, not everything can be repaired, but what is has been fortified and continues to push me forward every day.

The last 90 days have taught me to breathe through the painful moments, talk through my fears and anxieties, and communicate on deeper levels with my partners. I’ve learned to forgive myself and those around me, even the ones who have hurt or turned on me. I’ve taken some risks and made some life changing decisions for the better. I’ve expanded my art and jumped into my writing again. I’m learning to find hope and optimism even in uncertainty, and to trust in the love of those around me, even when they are hurting and quiet. I’ve learned to hold on to my community and coexist with those who hold tension with me, and to stay open and available to them should they ever need anything from me.

If the last 9 days have taught me nothing else, it’s that I’m not an imposter for having failures or for not having all the answers, and that sharing those moments as well as the victories is just as important to sharing my life experience, sometimes even more so. So, yes, I’m back. Flawed and struggling but growing and brave and becoming more myself every day.

This Ostara comes on the heels of an extremely trying winter. A breakup, health issues, household stress, and the constant feeling that nothing I attempted to nurture would ever thrive made it almost impossible to focus on much of anything at a time of year that is generally when I’m the most productive. As we approached Imbolc things began to lighten just a bit, but it was enough to give me enough hope to ride the waves that seemed to be carrying me way deeper than I thought I could find my way back from.

Then I was asked to be a voice. I was invited to speak to a small group of women about my experience and the lessons learned doing Good Girl and how my life has been changed by it all. I talked for a long time, and I’m sure I said a lot of useful things, but the one thing that stuck out in my mind was the very first bullet point.

Healing is not a one time event.

Let me repeat that. Healing is NOT a one time event.

Well, hell, guys. For a year I’ve been beating myself up because I thought I was failing, convinced that all the progress I thought I’d made was a lie, when really I was learning how to live again in a whole new way. I needed to cut myself a little slack and acknowledge how far I’d actually come, even if it seemed like I’d been stumbling and bumbling my way through most of it.

I tried to keep that in mind as Ostara approached, and yesterday as the sun rose around my plane I felt it filling me with a new energy I’ve never felt before, and it dawned on me. I haven’t been failing all winter. I haven’t been fallow. I haven’t neglected my seeds. For the first time in my life I went deeper into the dark season than ever before, and when I emerged I was truly transformed. I was taken to the brink, and yeah, I had to die a little to really complete my chrysalis. What Ostara brought me this year was not just new light or new growth but new life, new eyes, and new breath.

Is all the stress and pain gone? No, that’s real life. Healing and lessons and growth don’t wait until it’s convenient for mundane life, but the choice is mine to focus behind me on the cold darkness of winter or look ahead of me to the bright warmth of the coming seasons. The dark will return as the wheel turns, but I know I can not only survive it but pull from it the lessons of my deepest fathoms.

No, healing is not a one time event, and I don’t in any way believe it’s all over, but along with that healing I have grown to a new level of awareness and empathy, of intuition and intensity, of passion and power. I have claimed my place in the universe. I am ready to use the stardust with which I was born.

This year Imbolc was very quiet and subtle. I’ve been sick and healing from several setbacks, but I’ve also met an unmatched capacity for love and serendipity, creeping in from the balance of solstice. I chose not to do a set ritual this year. I didn’t even journey, I merely put on some music and began to dance and stretch. I had originally felt that the aspect of Brighid that would come to me would be the poet or the smith, as I’ve finally started writing again, and I’ve felt forged by the events of the last several months. What I was not expecting was Brighid the warrior. Don’t get me wrong. I’m strong; I’m a survivor. However, I’ve never been known to be on the frontline. I’m the healer that comes in afterwards. I’m the strategist who finds ways to avoid the fight. I’m the wife who stays at home and supports her soldier, and I always have been, but in this moment it was just me.

Our family is facing some tough choices, and I’ve felt like nothing I can do will protect us from failure. For the first time in a long time I don’t have any answers, and it’s not just me surviving this time; it’s us. Our country is under attack from within, not for the first time, but people are coming together and marching and making our voices heard as a country. I’ve felt bad that I’ve been sick or working when these big events happen. I want to stand up. I want to shout. I wanted to speak up against the men who stood in my workplace spouting hateful words, but my family depends on me to keep this job, so I kept quiet and wrote poetry in my head. I felt defeated, so when Brighid the warrior came to me and called me her child I felt like a disappointment to my goddess. For years she’s provided for me, and in this aspect I have not given everything I could have, but she wrapped me in her warmth and gave me a very important lesson.

There is a time and place for action, and this is going to be a long fight. It’s ok to let the people who are out there raising their voices now stand for me, and when they need to rest and recharge, those of us who have watched on the sidelines will be able to take over and keep the momentum going. Sometimes the loudest voices are the ones who whisper quietly on pages and surreptitious pipelines while the fires and the crowds distract attention. The quiet warriors are powerful, like a silent rage that flows under the surface of this resistance. We are the veins of the revolution, keeping the blood pumping and the tides churning. We are the spirit of America. We are Brighid the warrior.

November 8th.
I’m on a plane, and the 55 minute gate to gate flight from LAX to OAK seems to just keep getting longer as we watch the numbers creep up to the inevitable, and between trays of drinks and trash pick ups I feel a sense of dread creeping up inside me. This is going to be one of those days when, 20 years from now when we’re asked about it, each of us will remember vividly where we were, who we were with, what we were wearing. This is going to be the JFK assassination, Loma Prieta, 9/11. This is not good.

I look down the aisle. How many of these people are watching the numbers climb in exaltation? How many are ready to celebrate victory? How can I respond professionally if a passenger says something to my face?

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” the attendant working besides me begins, “but I hope Trump wins.”

I look at him for a moment before I can formulate a reply. A white make in his early 30s.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I speak, “but my genitalia prevents me from agreeing with you.”

He understands. He respects my opinions. We talk about the unrest this election is going to precipitate, and I can tell this is the warm up. Not all the conversations I’m about to have won’t devolve into arguments about why my family, my tribe, my community now has a whole new level of fear of the government that should be protecting them, and yes, I focus on the things that touch me personally because the nation of people I can’t reach is still too much to process, and it hurts my heart.

In the days that followed I’ve watched that nation hurt. I’ve watched that nation question. I’ve watched that nation panic. I’ve also watched people come together in support and love for one another. I’ve watched whole communities protect their own. I’ve watched individuals take their rage and find the voice to say “fuck you, this is who I am, and I’m not hiding any more, so you’re going to have to fight me!” This…this is what needed to happen. Instead of laying down and worrying about the outcome, we need to find our rage and focus it on change before the hammer falls.

Years ago I saw this moment in a meditation. Years before Game of Thrones would warn us, I would be told to be prepared before winter came. Years ago I wrote a poem about the power of nation with nothing left to lose.

This is our rock bottom, and as I take a break from writing an entire book about my experiences weathering my own winter, I am reminded that this is where most people find their No; when to stay silent is a death knell.

I implore you today to look deep inside yourself and find your No. Make it a Fuck No! It doesn’t have to be fighting or extravagant gestures of disobedience or heroism. Your No can be a donation to the ACLU or local organizations that protect the marginalized members of your community. Your No can be offering to walk with someone to make sure their safe from harassment. Your No can simply be checking in on those around you to make sure they’re safe inside their own emotions, because this is a terrifying time for many people who already had limited outlets. Your No can be their No until they can find it within them.

We will not survive this by hiding from it. We will not survive this by submission and supplication. We will not survive this with rash decision making and senseless destruction. Nothing comes from breaking the windows of a local business in an already struggling neighbourhood. Nothing comes from taking the last source of income from someone barely getting by. Everything comes from focusing that energy where it can actually bring change. Find your No in standing beside one another. More is accomplished from a thunder storm than a tidal wave. Let’s find our No in the thunder…together.

Admittedly this post is long past due. Admittedly this lesson is one I should have learned long ago. Admittedly this is something I should have foreseen. Admittedly, there’s still a lot I don’t know.

The window between Mabon and Samhain is always a trial for me. It’s full of landmines…anniversaries of loss and old wounds, PTSD triggers, and every year there’s something new, but every year I come out of it renewed somehow.

I’ve written twice now about the reality of healing and my experience post-Good Girl. Every single thing I’ve experienced in the year since the show has been a first-time experience, and not all of it has been a smooth transition. The area I’ve struggled the most has been relationships. My marriage is improving, but there are bumps in that road as I learn how to speak up for myself. I got engaged in April to my partner in California, and forging a new serious commitment has shown me how much the past ten years have changed me. It’s all helped me find pieces of myself I’d forgotten were ever important, but it’s also shown me where the wounds I started healing in 2015 were holding me back from being wholly present in any relationship.

Then there was this new relationship. It was unexpected, intense, and an all together new experience for me. Then I botched it. Oops. Admittedly there was some hardwiring that needed to be reworked before I tried to start any kind of relationship, especially one I wanted around for a while, but I didn’t know that. I knew I’d healed a lot. I knew I was still working on things. I knew there was no precedent for this in my life, because I had never been this version of myself in a relationship before. The problem was…I didn’t know how to be that person in a relationship, so I undulated constantly between a healing me and worrying about whether of not I was doing it right. In addition, I was just starting the long process of getting the medication I needed, and knowing help for my chemical issues was coming but delayed just made all my issues worse. Neither of us was perfect, but I will accept the parts of the perfect storm that were my fault in tainting what was a strong, healthy, happy relationship. Lo and behold, just after Mabon we have the fight that precipitates the end, and I spend a chunk of my time trying to sort it all out. By the end of the first round of serious journeys I realized this was just a symptom of a bigger problem, but it was a tangible one, so I could focus on it.

With this new information, a new series of introspection began. What was this bigger problem?

As Samhain approached and I began to make my connections to those who had passed in the last year, then those who had passed from my life, the messages I got were clear. I needed to die. I’ve spent my entire life fielding suicide attempts and health crises. I’ve burnt myself to the ground and rebuilt my life numerous times. I’ve felt dead inside on a regular basis for years. What I’ve never done is actually die. What I’ve never done is shed the part of me that cannot be healed.

When Allen Ginsberg first met Lucien Carr and began to really discover himself they decided they needed to die, but their symbolic suicides almost ended in accidental actual suicide, and I was not ready to take that kind of clutz awareness test. However, part of my spiritual growth this year has involved impromptu rituals and journeys. It wasn’t pretty or elaborate. It honestly started with a candle to make the bedroom smell pretty while I started my NaNoWriMo outline, but I quickly found myself immersed in a working to sacrifice myself completely. You see, when I began to heal I also began to die, an aspect of me anyway, and she was still in there dragging me to the bottom. In this vision I found myself dredging her up, drowning with her, and emerging as the person I’ve felt calling to me for almost a year.

This new me is still scared sometimes. She still hurts. She still bleeds. She still loves unconditionally and wants to believe the best. She still tries, takes risks, and she will still fail at things, but this new me is tired of dying slowly. The worst has happened. I’ve died, and I’ve survived it. While I don’t know that this relationship can be salvaged, I do know it’s taught me a very important lesson about myself and several about other people, and it’s been the source of invaluable memories and love. Does it still hurt if it’s completely over? That’s human, and I accept that I am human, but I also accept that the world is full of possibility, and I’m tired of being afraid of it.

Mabon, the second and middle harvest, is a day of balance, sharing, and “reaping what we sow”. It’s the time for contemplation and awareness of the thin line between light and dark. It’s a time for valuing and conserving.

We celebrate, but we also start to look towards what needs to be completed. What is reaching a natural end? What projects need to be wrapped up? What ones have run fallow and need to be let go so that we have enough to make it through the winter?

Quite often our rituals focus on celebrations to fuel us as we wrap up the tasks of our fruitful seasons. In my case, I’ve always planted my seeds at Mabon, and the dark season has become my fruitful season.

This year Mabon hits us at the tail end of what has been an extremely rough Mercury Retrograde for most people close to me, heightening the need for balance and contemplation. It’s hurt a lot, even by my standards, and I’ve felt all week like many of us are being set up for some pretty serious trials, but out of it I can feel the rich soil I’m cultivating for the months ahead.

As always, my Mabon solitary celebration takes a closer look at balance. This time it’s opening me up to just how much the dark side of that light/dark balance affects me. I’ve been meditating on how it can aid me instead of holding me back and how to go about using it properly. Because of the retrograde I’ve been extremely raw and emotional. Miscommunication is rampant. Relationships are teetering. Plans are failing. My world is burning to the ground, and while it took more than one match, I’m holding one of them. There’s very little light left to cling to for the season, and what there is is blinded by the conflagration. Fire. What is fire but light in the darkness? What is fire if not the transformation we started at Lughnassad. What is fire if not a chance for rebuilding. Still, there has to be balance. I cannot just let uncontrolled fires rage, and while the ones on the outside might be out of my control, the ones on the inside are my power and passion, and the key to not being consumed by them is to use their light to create that balance.

I decided weeks ago that the period between Mabon and Samhain would be a period of stepping back and contemplating my life and all the questions Mabon asks of us. The results of retrograde may have shouted them in my face, but the quiet creeping darkness of the days to follow will help be find the dark places I need to reconcile myself with. The fading light I feel around me gives me just enough to see the outline of the trials before me, but not enough to know where they’ll lead me, and that’s part of the lesson.

Mabon is a twilight. It will help me let go where I need to in order to preserve my energy for the storms worth weathering this winter, because they’re coming. The twilight reminds us that the deep dark is coming, and we can’t avoid it. We must embrace the chaos of the storm to survive it, and we must embrace the unseen in the darkness to navigate it. I have to have faith that I can.

Lughnasadh always brings an interesting energy with it. While Lugh won a lot of trials in his life through sheer skill, some of that skill was humour and wit, and there is never a shortage of humour or wit in the messages that come through this time of year. But what else? In honouring Lugh we remember the funerary games he organized for his foster mother, Tailtiu. We play games of skill and celebrate our respective talents. We dance, sing, enjoy the life energy of summer thriving around us. Now let’s incorporate the celebration of Lamas, the first harvest. Traditionally the first grains would be used to make bread to bless the occasion as the community came together to enjoy the bounty of harvest. Sometimes bread was baked in the shape of the Green Man in honour of the sacrifice he gives so that we may thrive. In all of this there is a theme of both celebration of the light and recognition of the dark as we begin to notice the days shortening, reminding us to be thankful for the harvest that will sustain us in the coming winter.

In my practice I’ve used it as a time to cleanse and bless my hearth and home, fortifying our household for the year to come with the rich energies of summer. This year I took a deeper look at that practice. Yes, I will probably still cleanse our home and reinforce our crystal grids, but the more meditation I’ve done the more thought I’ve given to the “hearth” in my life. While my tangible household is a brick and mortar place, my home is transient, my family scattered between the coasts, farther once I incorporate metamours. So what of this tribe? What of our hearth? How can we be cleansed and fortified for the year to come?

The beautiful thing about our Ohana is that everyone, no matter how far away or how little involved, brings something to the tribe. We each have our strengths, skills and talents that enrich the energy of the whole. There is not a single one of us who doesn’t work hard and strive to really experience life in their own way, and this energy finds its way to the core of what makes us strong as a unit. Those skills and strengths become our grains, and with some nurturing and encouraging, those talents flourish. Through their harvest we begin to manifest our best selves, and we become the bread men of Lamas, ingested to feel the blessings of the very earth that grounds and holds us. So, the hearth? The hearth is community, fired with our dedication to each other. It’s love, support, and solidarity, but it’s also sacrifice. We each give at one point or another so that the others may thrive. When each of my partners’ family becomes my family, and we weave a web of compassion and love, we become a strong tribe. Through that web we feel each other’s joy and pain. Through that web none of us can starve no matter how cold the winter might get, and because we’ve got Lugh on our side we do it with the flare of laughter and maybe some smartassery. Ok, a lot of smartassery.

Twenty years ago I learned a veritable tome of lessons, some of which I’m just learning now, and it seems unbelievable to me that I can look back at anything in my life knowing it happened twenty years ago. My mom taught me a lot about life while she was alive, and I’ve mentioned that before. She taught me compassion, strength, and determination. She taught me to seek adventure and levity in everything, to make people laugh whenever you can, and to live and love with all your heart no matter how scary the world feels. She taught me to trust my instinct and eschew advice that doesn’t feel right. She taught me to be myself.

What my mother’s death taught me was open honesty. You never know when the last time you say “I love you” or “good morning” or “good night” will be the last. It’s made me vulnerable at times, and I’ve had to learn to accept when it’s not reciprocated, but hey, another lesson, right?

But you see, it also taught me some less than positive lessons. At twelve years old I was already well aware that I was different. I didn’t have many friends, my anxiety and depression were already in full swing, and I’d already thought about suicide more times than I can remember now. I needed help, and I was constantly told I was wrong, broken, or worse…that I was fine. I was fat, I was slow, and I was constantly missing the mark. At twelve I had already had at least one nervous breakdown, I was scared of losing everyone I loved, and I had been proven correct. At twelve I discovered my intuition and empathy in the worst way, and I hated it, so at twelve I learned to hide. I learned to expect the worst. I learned to expect to be alone. I learned that change is terrifying. I learned to build walls, and forgot all those lessons about love and life and laughter.

When I started the Power of One it was immediately pointed out to me that when I’m uncomfortable or anxious I smile. It’s a skill I developed at a very young age, but I imagine I perfected it at my mother’s funeral. Since then it became a crutch I used to get me through parts of my life I felt I could not navigate, and it began to cloud the genuine me. I’ve been lucky enough to have people in my life who could see through the fog and find that genuine me, but for most of my life I haven’t been able to see her myself. I’ve merely been relying on the testaments of others who tell me they see her, like a fairy tale buried deep inside me. As the lessons from my mother started to actually take root and as my intuition and empathy refused to be ignored, life got harder, and the more I stayed inside my walls the more the fires outside tried to cook me out. I tried to let myself be vulnerable…to the wrong people at the wrong times. I tried to be happy…all the time, and ended up holding in the pain and sadness until I couldn’t, resulting in some pretty spectacular meltdowns. I tried to be strong and independent…and all I did was feel more like a failure.

In the year since I seriously started putting effort into my transformation, I’ve worked on being open without being overbearing, happy without using it to cover up when I’m not, and to know when I can be strong alone and when I need to reach out for help. Not all has gone according to plan, but if my mom’s death taught me none of this other bullshit, it taught me that life doesn’t care about your plans, and unpredictability brings as much serendipity as it does tragedy, and the only control I really have is how I choose to react to it, process it, and move on with my life. Losing my mother was not the first tragedy I’d faced in my life, but it was the first one I felt like I was facing alone. The truth is, every situation we face in life we face alone, even if we have the strongest support system on earth, because we’re the only ones who can do the internal work it takes for real survival…and real living.

I was told to write out what I would say to you if I could tell you how to make a relationship work with someone with BPD, someone like me. For some of you it’s too late. The damage is done. I’ve hurt you irreparably, broken trust, and shattered security. We’ve already reprogrammed our relationship to be what it can despite those things, and I deal with the wave of sadness that hits to think of all the things I lost by not being able to tell you what I needed, by not knowing myself. Each and every one of you has asked me what I need from a partner, but even as much as I’ve grown in the last couple of years, I couldn’t put them into words until they were worded as advice for someone else. If that isn’t just the portrait of BPD, I don’t know what is. My hope is that this can clarify some things, maybe starts some dialogues, and definitely give us some blueprints on how to move forward and forge stronger, healthier bonds.

Sometimes I need reassurance that I’m important, and I have said this over and over again. I don’t need to be your top priority, but I do need to be one of them if you’re going to call me a partner. Sometimes I need a little extra attention. Nothing grandiose. Just a reminder that I’m loved. It’s never that I don’t believe I am, but it’s nice to hear, see, feel it from you. I need random messages and occasional outpourings of emotion from you, not constantly, but I need it not to vanish for weeks at a time.

I need you to hear my words not my tone or body language. I need you to believe my words not take them as passive aggression or sass.

I need to feel secure, and when i ask for clarification on what seemed like a small action to you, I need you to not take it as malice or suspicion. I’m just trying to understand. Sudden changes in tone, behaviour, or levels of interaction will be internalized if I can’t mention them to you and get them out of my head, which is running through every reason why it’s all a sign you’re about to leave me. I’m not saying these changes aren’t natural or understood, especially when something is happening in your life. I’m just saying I might ask.

I need you to talk to me. I need you to let me talk. This all boils down to communication. I’m going to overthink things, and getting it out helps. Weird things cut deep sometimes, and all I need is to mention it so it doesn’t fester. I need to know we can have an open dialogue without you lashing out at me. It helps me stay calm and rational.

I need you to know I worry about pushing you away. I worry about being too complicated. I worry about being misunderstood. I worry. Mostly I worry about whether or not you’re happy with me, whether you’re still happy with me, whether you stay because it’s become routine.

I need honesty, even when I might not like it, because I need to trust that you will tell me the bad things along with the good so I don’t constantly wonder what you’re thinking but not saying.

I need balance. I need you to trust me to handle my issues on my own first before you swipe in to try and fix it, but I also need you to know that if I’m reaching out to you I’m at the end of my rope. I don’t want to add to your stress, and I’m doing what I can and taking steps every day to do it better, but I can’t always do it alone. It took me a long time to be able to ask for help, and if I do it means I trust you with my life and my heart. Please understand this.

I need you to know my triggers. I’ll never ask that you avoid them, because part of learning to cope with them is getting used to processing them, but I do need you to be a little sensitive to the aftercare if you’re going to trigger issues. I need to know I’m safe having a reaction to things with you.

I need you to give me some control. I need to feel competent. I need to feel like you believe I’m competent. I need you to not be condescending. I’m an adult, and I’m fully aware of what’s happening and what I need. When I feel like I’m being coddled, babied, or invalidated it triggers everything, and I forget I’m strong and stop trying. I need to not stop trying.

I need you to be clear, patient, and observant at times. Especially when it comes to your needs and issues.

I need you to trust me to adjust my behaviour when I am wrong. I need you to trust me to understand when you need a little space, but I need you to eventually come back from that space. I need you to trust that nothing I do is malicious, and help me be a better partner. Lastly, I need you to trust me to be doing everything I can to be a better version of me every day. I’m not happy being this difficult to live with. I’m not complacent in it. I’m not making excuses.

This is not a list of things you have to learn to do for me. This is a list of things we can learn to navigate together.

I don’t believe we are stuck. I believe things can be improved even after years of unhealthy habits. No, you can never really start over, and there will always be old wounds, but healing is a powerful thing, and all of my relationships are strong, or we wouldn’t be in them.

I’ve done a lot of my own reading and research, but maybe it’s more helpful from a voice that’s not mine…

Which is why I’m here. I was asked whay advice I would give to a partner of someone with BPD. This is what I said.

The past few months have been rough, and I haven’t been alone in my struggles. It seems like everyone around me has gone through family problems, major depression, personal crisis, medical or financial hardships, or some combination of those things since Beltane, enough that I had to stop and wonder if there was any significance to it. Today I started to get the whispers of an answer.

This Litha is particularly strong, as it coincides with the full moon. This is the day of the Sun. It’s the time for harvesting the herbs we’ll use for healing and rituals, making it an auspicious day for work yet to come. That raw, masculine energy is high, and we are full of powerful potential.

At Ostara the world was bright, and we watched each other build cocoons with visions of being beautiful butterflies, looking forward to the day we would spread our wings and soar on the sunlight. We waited patiently, and little by little we began to change. This is where the transformation began, and we needed that time to be at full strength for what came next.

As I’ve written several times, transformation is painful. In the second half of this process, our entire form changes, and the cocoon has to be broken. Our safe little world has to be opened up to an exciting, but terrifying, sky. It’s bloody. It’s traumatic. Everything about us must change. The caterpillars we were, and the cocoon we used to shield ourselves during our transformation must be cast aside in order to become what we are meant to be. Those cocoons may have felt safe, but they were dark and restricting. We weren’t meant to live there.

These battles we’ve been fighting for months are necessary for the transformation we’re each undertaking. They’re making us stronger, moving us towards who we really are instead of the mere possibilities we have been, but only if we’re willing to let go of the caterpillars and the temporary shells they built around us.

So, back to Litha and the sun we meet as we emerge. Sun means fire, and the fires of Litha burn hot, hotter this year than I have ever felt. For many of us that fire has raged internally. It purifies and transforms us, but it can be destructive if we fear it instead of dancing with it. I’m feeling change I set in motion years ago, and I have felt it in every cell in my body for the past three months. It has tested my faith in myself. It has tested my relationships. It has tested my ability to function at mundane tasks while every part of me feels torn apart, but in the end I…in the end we all…will emerge from the darkness that has surrounded us. I feel it happening a little more every day. I see it happening around me. It may not be over for some, but it will get better. I know we will all pull through this and fly together in the sunlight.